While the COP26 gave birth on Saturday in Glasgow to a text, but it is a mixed agreement. Suspecting the criticisms that were going to burst forth, the British president of this conference, Alok Sharma, said in a touched voice and tears in his eyes “deeply sorry” for this outcome, before endorsing it with a blow of hammer.
The agreement adopted aims to accelerate the fight against global warming, but without guaranteeing to meet the objective of containing it at 1.5 ° C or responding to requests for assistance from poor countries.
For Antonio Guterres, “it’s not enough”
The world climate conference resulted in “welcome steps forward, but it is not enough,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. Listing the objectives “that we did not achieve during this conference”, he mentions in particular “the end of fossil fuel subsidies, the exit from coal, putting a price on carbon” and financial aid to the most vulnerable countries. poor. “The texts adopted are a compromise. […] Unfortunately the collective political will was not sufficient to overcome deep contradictions ”.
The text was adopted after two weeks of trying negotiations, like the last-minute, less restrictive changes introduced on the issue of fossil fuels at the request of China and India. The Prime Minister of the host country, Boris Johnson, who had traveled twice to Glasgow to try to facilitate the discussions, for his part judged that this result constituted “a big step forward” but that there was “still a lot to do ”. “We have always known that Glasgow was not the finish line,” commented US envoy John Kerry.
On temperatures, the text calls on member states to raise their reduction commitments more regularly than provided for in the Paris agreement, starting in 2022. But with the possibility of adjustments for “particular national circumstances”, a point which has aroused criticism from NGOs.
Moreover, the compromise found does not ensure compliance with the objectives of the 2015 Paris Agreement: to limit warming “well below” 2 ° C and if possible to 1.5 ° C. “It’s soft, it’s weak, and the 1.5 ° C target is barely alive, but there is a signal that the Coal Age is over. And it is important ”, disputed Jennifer Morgan, boss of Greenpeace International. The text is a “bitter pill to swallow”, for her part regretted the representative of Liechtenstein, summarizing many interventions by delegates.
“Bla bla bla”
The explosive issue of aid to poor countries has also not found a resolution. Scared by the still unfulfilled promise of the richest to increase their climate aid in the South to $ 100 billion per year from 2020 onwards, the poor countries, the least responsible for global warming but on the front line in the face of its impacts, were asking for funding. specific to the “loss and damage” they are already suffering. But developed countries, foremost the United States, which fears possible legal consequences, strongly opposed it.
And reluctantly, the poor countries gave in, so as not to lose the progress on the fight against global warming, while saying they were “extremely disappointed”. “It is an insult to the millions of people whose lives are being ravaged by the climate crisis,” commented Teresa Anderson, from the NGO ActionAid International. The face of the global youth climate movement, Greta Thunberg, was more concise, once again calling COP26 a “blah blah blah”.